I
have traveled quite a bit and have never seen any part of the natural world
that didn’t have some interesting aspect. Desserts, forests, barren beaches,
tropical jungles, grassland scrub all are interesting if you look closely. Man
made landscapes are usually the most uninteresting places on the planet, parking
lots garages, alleys, landfills, overgrazed pastures, over farmed fields, feed
lots, under bridges. Man seems obsessed with vacuums while nature abhors a vacuum.
Nature is always filling every nook and cranny with some interesting living
organism while man seems intent on removing every complex system and replacing
it with a simple single purpose system such as straightening a river or putting
creeks in drainage ditches or planting mono tree plantations. The intelligence
of the natural world is being lost at an alarming rate. The intelligence is
that which informs us how ecological systems work how the geology and biology
work in harmony to create the environment we live in.
The natural world is a work in progress and conversation between geology, biology,
climate, solar and lunar events, and of course anthroplogy (the influence of
man).
Our gardening can make us part of that conversation where we inform and are
informed by the natural world about our own well being. If we look at the geology
of our region we can be informed as to the universal cosmological existence
that we find ourselves in. We can realize that we are part of this fabric or
convince ourselves we are not part of it. Our garden can be one of the threads
that connects us to everything else.we can become informed by the eons of earth
history as to how our region was formed and how the biology responded to create
sustainable life. So we are not inclined to say something like “ oh you
can’t grow anything here its just nasty gumbo clay” but instead
say “These clay soils sure hold moisture well my cannas and gingers are
doing great”. By examining the natural world around us we can then decide
what we can grow by what is already growing. In certain areas this might not
be possible because there is no natural world the land has been altered in such
a way that all that is growing is invasive non-native weeds. Once we observe
the natural world we then have many questions and few answers and probable fewer
places to find those answers (this hopefully is what this website is about finding
answers).
©
